The lid has finally begun to crack open not only on the terrorist past of Bill Ayers, but more importantly on Barack Obama's association with him.

After all, is it comforting to consider that one of the men who wants to be president of the United States has worked in several capacities with a domestic terrorist who bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and several other government buildings? 

In addition to many of the things about Ayers' terrorist past we've begun to hear lately (thanks entirely to the efforts of the "new media"), the piece from Investors Business Daily points out that Ayers hasn't left his radical Marxist leanings behind--not by a longshot:

Obama says he barely knows him, but in the years when he was meeting and serving together on the Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund, as well as launching his career with a fundraiser in Ayers' Che Guevara-festooned house, Ayers made at least four Marxist pilgrimages to Caracas to praise Chavez's dictatorial regime.

He sits on the board of a Venezuelan government think tank called Miranda International Center, focused on bringing Cuba-style education to Venezuelan school children.

Recent polls show this turning of schools toward Marxist indoctrination terrifies average Venezuelans. Venezuelan dissidents also accuse Miranda of rewriting constitutions in South America to grant leftist leaders absolute power, with some saying Ayers had a role in 2007's effort to give Chavez total power inside Venezuela.

You might recall that Chavez has been extremely hostile toward America, is cozy with many foreign regimes that are hostile to the U.S., and has deliberately worked to undermine U.S. foreign policy abroad.  He has even worked to undermine President Bush with his own people by giving discounted heating oil to "poor Americans." 

Ayers hasn't really changed.  He put down the bombs, the trampy clothes and the ratty hair in favor of more upscale weapons and uniforms: the liberalized American education system, the corrupt Chicago power structure, and suits and sweaters. 

But Ayers also has other up-to-date anti-American revolutionary ties, according to the IBD piece:

It's a good guess that his biography on the Miranda site was written by Ayers himself. Ayers' Miranda peers are a soup of the international far left: a FARC apologist from Colombia, a Che-crazy UCLA professor named Peter McLaren, and activist Eva Golinger, who was closely tied to Philip Agee, the fugitive CIA traitor who died earlier this year in Havana.

Meanwhile, Ayers' stepson Chesa Boudin has close Venezuelan ties, too. He identified himself as a foreign-policy adviser intern to Venezuela's government in 2005. He had an office next to Chavez's own in the presidential palace. Not surprising, since Boudin's grandfather is Fidel Castro's personal attorney, and his mother is jailed Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin. His family ties give him street cred to communists.

It cannot be mere coincidence that Barack Obama is so surrounded by people who loathe and outright hate the United States. 

Obama's long-time pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright was outed as a racist, America-hating Afrocentrist earlier this year.

Even Obama's wife Michelle said earlier this year that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm proud of my country." (When was the first time you can remember being proud of America?  Can you remember that far back?  Had you quit playing with toys yet?)

Is it reasonable to believe that, despite being surrounded by people who loathe America, Barack Obama does not? 

And if Barack Obama bears a sentiment anything remotely like that of the people around him, can we possibly trust a man like that to lead the United States?